And here's an interview with a color vision researcher getting weirded out by it, too, so it's not just ignorance of the phenomenon that's making it seem freaky.
Seriously. I just completed this course (It was supposed to be an 8-week course, but I binged through it over a weekend. Algorithms course, this was not!), so none of this is surprising to me.
Mostly I'm just bummed I can't get it to switch. I feel like I'm being trolled.
And then it happens to you. And the color combination you found so implausible before now seems unambiguous. That's what's wigging me out. I understand the general principles behind how it's happening, but visually, I cannot reconcile the white-gold version I see sometimes with the blue-black version I see other times. I did manage to will myself to swap them once as I was looking at it, and I'm probably going to spend a stupid amount of time practicing that now.
I walk away from the internet for ONE DAMN MINUTE. I watched a little television. Played a little bit of video game. Decide it's time to get through my RSS news. Plop open one link and BLAM. I am confronted with the undeniable-ness of the blue dress with black fringe.
I know FOR A FACT that last night and earlier today the damn thing was WHITE with GOLD. FACT. I was thinking those people who can see it either way are special mutants and I hate them. The people who only saw it as black and blue were WRONG.
NOT. ANY. MORE.
FUCK.
And JUST NOW. When I want to look at all the things I looked at when it was FOR A FACT WHITE with GOLD and it REVERTS on me, so now I only see white/gold.
THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS, NOT WITH A BANG BUT WITH A MAGICALLY COLOR CHANGING DRESS.
I can't see anything but dark blue and black, even if I cover up the background and look away and look back and shit. From the way I see it, I can't even imagine it appearing as something close to white or gold. Maybe a slightly lighter blue and a very dark golden brown, but that's as close as I can get.
Same. Dark blue and black. Where is the white and gold? Covering parts of it up, looking away and back. I am doing all the tricks I did to make that stupid dancer switch directions - deep focus, cross eyes for a minute, look slightly off-center...still just blue and black.
__________________
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Ok, here's another one. This one is actually making me a lot more confused than the dress.
The 'green' and 'blue' are apparently the same colour. The reason they appear different is that the orange stripes go through the 'green' but the magenta stripes go through the 'blue'. If you look closely at the edges you can see that they're actually the same thing.
__________________
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I can't see anything but dark blue and black, even if I cover up the background and look away and look back and shit. From the way I see it, I can't even imagine it appearing as something close to white or gold. Maybe a slightly lighter blue and a very dark golden brown, but that's as close as I can get.
Same. Dark blue and black. Where is the white and gold? Covering parts of it up, looking away and back. I am doing all the tricks I did to make that stupid dancer switch directions - deep focus, cross eyes for a minute, look slightly off-center...still just blue and black.
I see white and gold in the picture that the video opens with. Looking at the actual picture I see black and blue (because that is the color of the dress, duh). What do you see?
I get that because of lighting and brain weirdness, you could take a really bad photo and start an internet meme, but the pic on the left is, like, objectively not black and blue. I mean, it's not quite white and gold either, more light blue and brown, but sersiously… there's no black in that photo.
Here's the thing. If you come to me with the first pic and say "the real dress is actually blue and black," I'd be surprised and skeptical, but maybe it is. Lighting can do weird things to colors. If you come to me with the first pic and say "this photo of this dress is blue and black," you're a lying liar who is wrong.
__________________
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
It was originally white and gold for me. Now it starts that but morphs to blue-black, especially if I have to scroll down to see it (and focus on the right shoulder).
I would be interested to see a breakdown of the demographics of the two teams based on the climate and amount and type of sunlight the people are acclimatised to.
Some form of game, perhaps, with the two colour-based teams attempting to get control of the truth? Each convinced the other team is completely screwed up? And both allowing their entire lives to be taken over?
__________________ The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
Like Shea, I have always seen light blue and gold. I have looked at it over three days on different machines, computers and sites and it is always light blue and gold to me. I thought I was a mutant but I have found a few people who agree with me.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
According to color isolation of the actual image those of us who see the lighter/dusty blue and bronzy gold are seeing the actual colors as they are in the photo . Does that mean our brains don't correct for color as much?
Trivia: Between 0:15 and 0:20 of the video the dress goes from white/gold to blue/black on me. The video shows the dress as it exists on some webpage and then reframes it in black. But now I have to fully disclose that I'm one of the weird mutants that I used to hate who could see it as both white and blue. It happens while I'm looking right at it, too. For a second or two it looks, you know, white with gold fringe and then as my eyes move over the picture my brain recalibrates to see it as it's supposed to be.
Re: Optical illusions
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